Lawyers in Hell (56 page)

The
Ataphoi
lines cracked against the bronze bulwark.  They showed the Spartans their backs and fought their own kind in desperation.  They fought to get away.  They fought to return to the welcoming shadows of their dread gorge:  they fought to live.

And, true to his word, Leonidas slaughtered them like cattle.

The day drew on, and when the king finally called for an end to the butchery only a lucky few
Ataphoi
remained to slink and scurry back over the rim of the plateau; he doubted they’d number enough to fill the seats of a small theater.  Leonidas leaned on the cracked shaft of his spear
 –
his hip throbbed, but the bleeding had stopped
 –
and surveyed the carnage in his wake.  It seemed as though the Temple of the Ephors rested on a sea of corpses.

Dagger-wielding helots rooted among the piles of stinking dead, dispatching those they found yet clinging to life.  Others salvaged the allied wounded.  Leonidas spotted Simonides picking his way toward him.  The poet looked ghastly.  Blood caked his hands and arms to the elbow, and he held a knife loosely by his side.

“Simonides of Keos!  You survived.”

The poet gazed in wonder at Leonidas, at the nimbus of hellish light seeming to wreathe him, and bowed.  “Lord.  We heard a rumor in the rear that you had fallen.  I am pleased to see it was unfounded.”

“I did fall,” Leonidas replied.  “But I arose again.”  He gestured to the field around them.  “Thermopylae looked much like this, on the eve of the first day.  How many of my Spartans have fallen?”

Simonides exhaled.  “Thirty, lord.”

“Thirty.”  Leonidas shook his head.  He looked up, again, to see Dienekes approach.  “Is it true, dear friend?  We lost thirty brothers?”

Though blood-blasted and limping, Dienekes’ eyes were alert.  He nodded.  “Mostly from the right.  Alpheus, ’ere he died, told me that bastard Menelaos broke formation.  Charged into the thick of them and left a hole in the front rank.”

“That son of a Mycenaean whore!  Where is he?”

Dienekes gestured up at the temple.  “Near death.  Agis had a few of the slaves cart him up there.”

A dangerous light kindled in Leonidas’ eyes.  “Follow me.  Both of you.”

*

The trio threaded through the wrack of war, stopping now and again for Leonidas to speak in low tones with his brother Spartans.  Though they exchanged smiles and jests, the malevolent gleam never left the king’s eyes.  His men apprehended danger.  By the time they mounted the stairs to the temple Leonidas’ cortege had grown.

He found the ephors in their accustomed place.  Agis, Brasidas, and Lysandros sprawled wearily in their seats, still sticky with the blood of the slain.  Pale and near death, Menelaos lay on a litter on the floor with Lykourgos attending to him.  Near them, a pair of slaves held down a writhing captive:  a naked
Ataphoi
glistening with sweat and blood, its hairless body deformed by a set of vestigial limbs sprouting from its back.  Startlingly blue eyes pleaded with them to let it go.

“P-please …” it croaked.

As Leonidas traversed the interior of the temple, the creatures lurking in the shadows grew silent.  Their wings ceased to rustle; their claws were still.  Their screeches faded as though gripped by fear.

“Ephors!” he said, his voice booming.  “We have won a victory!”

Before any of the others could so much as greet Leonidas, Lykourgos shot to his feet.  The old man rapped his staff against the floor.  “Victory?  What price this victory, Leonidas?  One of our own lies stricken!”

Leonidas crossed to Menelaos’ side and knelt.  Swords and axes had dealt ferocious wounds to his torso, arms, and legs.  It was a testament to his Homeric vitality that he still had enough essence to be counted amongst the living
 –
or what passed for living
 –
souls in war-torn Tartaros.  The wounded man’s eyes fluttered open; he saw Leonidas’ blood-grimed face and smiled.  “Rest easy,” Leonidas said.  He glanced at the captive
Ataphoi,
then at Agis, among the seated ephors.  “Did that thing tell you who armed them?”

Agis looked askance at it.  “It blames Kharon.”

“Kharon?”

“F-ferryman,” the creature sobbed.  “Ferryman … c-came among us!  G-gave us hateful knives!  Told us … told us to rip and slay!”

“Liar!” Lykourgos barked.  He struck the thing in the face with his iron-shod staff.  Bone crunched; blood spurted from its nose and mouth.  “I know Kharon!  He would never stoop so low!”

The
Ataphoi
wailed.  “F-ferryman!”

“If it speaks again, I will carve its lying tongue from its head!”  Lykourgos spat.

“Get hold of yourself, Lawgiver.”  A grim smile twisted Leonidas’ lips as he apprehended the truth: 
a spare and leathery fellow who wore a ferryman’s coin on a thong about his neck
.  “I did not hear it accuse Kharon of any wrong-doing.  In truth, I would wager this thing has never seen Kharon.”  Leonidas snapped his fingers.  “Look at me!  It was not the boatman of the Styx who gave you weapons, was it, wretch?  Was it?”

The thing shook its deformed head.

Brasidas frowned.  “Then who?”

Leonidas gave a mirthless chuckle.  “Earlier, did you not see a tight-lipped rogue with an
obol,
the ferryman’s coin, tied about his neck?  It was Alexandros’ man, Nearchos.  Though in truth, I expect it was Alexandros himself who gave the order.  The young whelp will make a worthy adversary.”

“You have cause, now, Lykourgos,” Agis said.  “Call forth the Erinys!”

“No,” Leonidas replied.  “Alexandros is mine.”

Lykourgos rounded on the Spartan king.  “Impertinent fool!  You think fighting a battle on our very doorstep gives
you
the right to counsel
us?
 
We
are the Chosen of Persephone! 
We,
alone, will render judgment on Alexandros of Macedon!  Go!  Take yourself away from here and await our summons, as it pleases us!  There is still a charge of impiety hanging over your head!  Go!”

But Leonidas did not move.  He knelt there beside Menelaos, one hand stroking the fallen giant’s sweat-slick brow.  The air in the temple grew chill despite the infernal heat.  “Simonides, you told me earlier that the Kore chooses only Spartans as her ephors.  Correct?”

The poet of Keos shivered.  “That is true, lord.”

“There must be some mistake, then, for noble Menelaos is no Spartan born, is he Simonides?  He is a son of Mycenae, is that not true?  The mantle of kingship over Sparta does not a Spartan make.”

“You are correct, lord.”

Leonidas snatched a handful of Menelaos’ damp hair and levered his head up.  “And that’s why thirty of my men have returned to the Darkness, to begin the journey anew!  Because you are no Spartan, you Mycenaean swine!”

Despite his wounds, Menelaos struggled to rise; his lips peeled back in a bloody snarl as he spat at Leonidas.  “D-dog!”

“Find me when you return, you miserable cuckold, and we will settle accounts like men!”  With that, Leonidas ripped a broad-bladed dagger from Menelaos’ own belt and plunged it into the Mycenaean’s chest.  Agis and the other ephors leapt to Menelaos’ defense, only to be beaten back by spear-wielding Dienekes.

Leonidas twisted the blade.

Menelaos shuddered, his eyes rolling back in his head.  To his credit, he uttered not a sound.

Into that gaping wound Leonidas thrust his hand; when he drew it back, slick with gore, it clutched Menelaos’ still-beating heart.

Forgotten, the captive
Ataphoi
howled with mirth, its blue eyes aglow.

King Leonidas of Sparta staggered to his feet and slung that gobbet of muscle into the shadows, where things could be heard scrabbling over it, hissing and biting.  He stared at Agis, Brasidas, and Lysandros.  “I have no quarrel with you.”

After a moment, Agis shook his head.  “Nor we with you.”

Lykourgos, though, strode forward in a towering rage, oblivious to the spear leveled at his breast.  “You are judged, Leonidas son of Anaxandridas!  In the name of Queen Persephone, I pronounce the Doom of the Erinys upon you!  Arise, wrathful daughters of Ouranos!  Arise and slay!”

Like a prophet of old, the lawgiver stood with his arms upraised and his eyes closed in divine ecstasy.  Perhaps he expected the shadows to roil and flow over the offending Spartan, to hear his screams as the bronze claws of the Erinys tore the flesh from his bones.  Perhaps he expected cries of mercy or of repentance as the bat-winged sisters swept down on Leonidas.

But what he got was silence.

Nothing stirred.

He opened his eyes and met the king of Sparta’s gaze.  There was no trace of mockery in his visage, only a grim sense of brooding majesty.

“I … I am the Chosen of Persephone!  I judge you!”

“No,” Leonidas said.  He turned away, motioned for Dienekes and Simonides to leave the temple, for the slaves to haul the captive
Ataphoi
out of his sight.  The three remaining ephors joined them, leaving Lykourgos alone.

“I am the Chosen of Persephone and I judge you, Leonidas!”

“No.”  The king of Sparta stopped; he turned back to face Lykourgos.  “No, for I am the Chosen of Hades and I am your master!  You are a coward, Lykourgos, called the Lawgiver, and I judge you unfit to wear the mantle of a Spartan!  By
Theos Khthonios
, god of the underworld, the dread Lord Hades, I cast you into the shadows!”

“You are nothing!  Nothing, do you hear?”  Lykourgos rapped his staff on the marble floor.  “Attend me, ephors!  Denounce him!”

Leonidas merely shook his head.  He resumed his path from the temple, and with his every step the umbra of hellish light surrounding Lykourgos shrank.

“I am the … the Chosen of Persephone!”

Leonidas crossed the threshold; behind him, the temple’s interior was plunged into darkness.  Wings rustled.  Brazen claws clashed on marble and tore flesh.  And hissing voices rose in volume, drowning out Lykourgos’ screams….

Erra and the Seven

By

Chris Morris

Divinity of hell!

When devils will the blackest sins put on,

They do suggest at first with heavenly shows,

As I do now.

– William Shakespeare,
Othello

When Lysicles awoke, the light hurt his eyes.  So white and bright blazed this light, he could see nothing else.  Tears were streaming down his face; he could feel them on his cheeks.  He rubbed his face and his hand came away sticky.  Around him he heard moaning and groaning.  Then the moaning and groaning stopped; perhaps it was his.

He was lying on his back, this he knew for certain.  He kept blinking, trying to clear his vision, struggling to see something beyond the blazing light.  Then the moaning and groaning began again, guttural and wordless.  His eyes hurt.  His mouth hurt.  His whole face hurt.  His chest hurt.  He touched his hand to his breast and felt a gaping wound.  Then the light streamed even brighter.

Someone said, “Lysicles the Athenian.  Put him with his kind, in Erebos,” just before knowingness left him, scourged away by the bright white light until something huge and dark ate up all the brightness – until all that was left was pain and dark.

Erebos?

Then he wakes once again.  His eyes, his mouth, his chest hurt.  He is wounded.  Now he can see blurred shapes, a crossroads.  So is this Erebos on the shores of the Styx?  He blinks and blinks again.

Is
this Erebos, in the realm of Hades, amid the shadows between the world of the living and the world of the dead?  Is this the crossroads where three roads meet:  the road to Tartaros; the road to Asphodel; and the road to Elysion?  If it is, souls are sent here to be judged and set on their deserved paths:  to Tartaros, whence there is no return and no relief; to Asphodel’s meadows, where stricken heroes wander who remember name and fame only by drinking blood; or to the fields of honor on the isle of Elysion, where bliss and loved ones wait.

But he remembers.  Lysicles has already been judged, in New Hell:  the fearsome Erra and his Seven, peerless champions, have eaten his damned eyes, his tongue, and his heart and sent him here to Hades, half blind, half dumb and too weak to stand, with a hole where his heart should be.

He remembers more.  For many days he languished, healing from his wounds.  How long?  He doesn’t know.  His eyes came back (slowly, so slowly) and he could see ever more clearly the shadows of Erebos in which he now dwelt.  His tongue came back, itching and burning, hard to control as it grew anew, until he could drink better and eat; then mumble, then mutter, then speak.  His heart came back, thumping and thrumming in his chest, though his pulse still bumped and blood rushed in his ears whenever he tried to stand.

So he bided there, time uncounted, between the pool of Lethe, where common souls drink to erase all memory, and the pool of Mnemosyne, where initiates of the Mysteries drink their memories back into their heads.  Sad souls came to tend him, blank-faced and shrouded.

Then someone brought him water from the pool of Memory.

“Drink this, brave Athenian,” she said.  Her gaze spun him breathless when she met his eyes.

Should he know her?  Did he know her?  She held out a bowl.

He drank, though it was hard with his tongue yet a stump.  She resembled Hecate, goddess of the crossroads and magic, but why would mystic-eyed Hecate, far-darting genius of the underworld, take notice of Lysicles among all these dead – only one more burnt-out wraith of a mortal?

Still, he thinks it is she.

“Thank you, Blessed One,” he mumbles with his stump of a tongue, carefully humble before this spirit of the dead who stoops  to tend him.

And having drunk, Lysicles recollects himself completely, all that he had been, all that he had done while alive:  he had kept to his oaths; he had kept his soul clean and pure, as Homer advised, and never let his heart be defiled by the taint of evil and venality.  Never.  Before his eyes flashes all that had happened to him in life, and why:  how he had been tried in Athens and executed for the treason of rashness while his commanding general, Chares, went free.

When he looked up, the spirit with the bowl was gone.  He was alone, sitting among those souls who staggered where Homer said the dead would go, “down the dank moldering paths and past Ocean’s streams, past the White Rock and the Sun’s Western Gates and past the Land of Dreams….”

Fury flooded him, bringing him strength.  His heart pounded harder and he got to his knees, then to his feet, and stood wavering there.  Nevertheless he stood:  naked and ravaged but upright.  He was a soul in Hades, not a war casualty, not a corpse.  He had a second chance to win salvation and be reunited with his beloveds in Elysion.  Forever.

Erra and the Seven had audited his appeal and sent him here.  Lysicles would never forget Erra, the god of pestilence and mayhem, appraising him.  He would never forget Erra’s personified weapon, pitiless warrior with that molten gaze, who carved out his eyes, his tongue, his heart, killing him yet again.  Nor would he ever forget the guilty looks of his counsels, Hammurabi and Draco, when sentence was passed.  Or Alexander of Macedon, holding Lysicles while he was being mutilated, or old Aristotle, averting his face; or the new-dead soldier, Lawrence, muttering a prayer in Arabic and calling on a god that would not, or could not, help a Greek general having his eyes put out by one of Erra’s seven
Sibitti
, terrifying sons of heaven and earth.

All that was his past.  From it, he would make his future.  If he passed whatever tests lay before him, he might return to the arms of his beloved wife, his sons, his
eromenoi.

But first Lysicles will find Chares, rapacious betrayer, and exact his due.  And then he will find Alexander of Macedon, and cut out the eyes and tongue and heart of his enemy.  And then he will find Hammurabi and Draco and discuss this pound of flesh he’d paid to the auditors from Above.  His counsels had failed in their roles as Lysicles’ advocates:  the Babylonian had done him no good, no matter how much Akkadian and Sumerian claptrap he understood; Draco was little better, full of himself and the iron taste of logic run amok.  If those two lawmakers had succeeded, Lysicles would be with his loved ones now, not staggering around Erebos, trying to see, trying to speak, trying to heal.

Hell is different for each soul, he well knows.  Few escape eternal torment.  But here, in the brightest part of Hades’ dim and shadowy day, he can glimpse redemption:  the isle of Elysion beckons, green and gleaming on the horizon, close enough that it seems to Lysicles he could swim for it, strike out across the mouth of the Styx, across Ocean … when he was a little stronger.  Between him and Elysion and his loved ones remains only the repair of his soul’s flesh, and eluding or convincing those who tend the dead here in Erebos.

But first, he is hungry for revenge.  Wrath consumes him.  Somewhere in Hell, Chares and the others who have wronged him are hiding.  Somewhere here, Chares waits, with his unbridled lusts and his dishonest heart.  Somewhere….

*

Erra and the Seven, peerless champions, have brought pestilence and mayhem to the Ten Courts of Hell in Diyu laying low all ten Yama Kings who rule Diyu’s endless dark mazes, spreading incessant torture and confusion as the Chinese gods prescribe.  They have brought an unquenchable conflagration to Jahannam, where Allah sends the unfaithful to suffer their due, boiling in water and roasting in flames.  They have visited upon bleak Helheim a deadly cold, spreading faster than Norsemen can run, freezing souls in their tracks as they flee.  In each of these realms, the torture of the damned follows the mandate from Above:  they suffer, they die; they are resurrected, only to suffer more and die again and be resurrected again.  Wails of misery rise up to the heavens.  Erra and his Seven are made glad.

It is good to be Erra, bringing punishment to the deserving.  He and his seven Sibitti, terrifying weapons, sons of heaven and earth, are justly pleased.  Hell’s mandate is made fierce and shining like the sun, wherever they bring the righteous wrath of the heavens to the unrighteous.

All this time, red-winged Kur, lord of Ki-gal, and his Kigali boy have guided them unerringly from one region of the netherworld to the next.  Wherever they have gone, Almighty Kur has kept his promise:  Hell’s every door has opened unto them; no underworld has escaped their withering glances, their fire, their ice, their torrents, their lightning, their yawning chasms, their pestilential breath.  And all this time, Kur’s
eromenos,
Eshi, watches wide-eyed but never says a word, while his black Kigali skin blooms red with angry blotches and he holds tight to his mentor’s long-nailed hand, his spiky tail lashing, wings unfurled.

Now the fear of heaven pervades the manifold settlements of hell, and loosens the bowels of those rulers of underworlds become too pleasant, and haunts the nights of the too-complacent damned.  All in hell quake in their places and in their beds.

So when they have finished their audit in the city of Pandemonium, when no stone remains unturned, no smile upon any face, Erra and the fearsome Seven are ready to quit the chastised city and return to Ki-gal for the night, satisfied, their bellies full of the flesh of tortured souls.

Then a tremor not of Erra’s making shakes the ground.  Snow begins to fall from the fiery vault overhead.  Clouds of white snow and yellow snow and black snow and brown snow obscure the light from Above.

Erra’s Seven draw their swords and crane their necks, seeking out a target, shaking back their cowls.  These are his personified weapons, unrivaled and eager:  battle alone brings life to them; they are grinning.

Out of the blowing snow comes a cold that rivals any cold that might issue from the swords of his Seven, a cold that could freeze a doomed soul to ice.  And out of that cold comes a howling to curdle blood.

Aloft, a winged shadow soars, then dives from the snowy sky, whirling and churning and beating the air.  Now feathered wings tuck tight.  Down hurtles a huge and monstrous creature, with a tail and fangs and breath of fire.  It is flanked by others of its kind, descending on its right and on its left:  a dozen more winged serpents, falling fast.  All these land on the snow beside the greatest of their number, whose eyes are huge and fierier than the eyes of the second of the Seven.

The Seven surround Erra and Kur and his Kigali boy in a circle, protective and threatening, their teeth bared, their swords sparkling and sparking and slitting the air, promising doom to whoever comes close.

The Kigali boy whispers, “Almighty Kur, what are they?  They are like us but not like us….”  Kur says, “Hush, Eshi.  Be you still.”  And the Kigali boy wraps his tail around Kur’s strong left arm.

Then the greatest of the feather-winged serpents gnashes its fangs and closes eyes that burn like stars in the night.  Its huge wings bate.

Within the circle of the seven terrifying weapons from heaven, Kigali wings bate as well.

Snow swirls round the thirteen winged serpents with their flaming breath.  When the blizzard clears, one feather-winged man and twelve winged serpents confront them.  The man’s arms are crossed, his face like doom.

“It’s a cold day in hell, Erra, and here I am.  What do you think you’re doing here?  We’ve asked no help from such as you.”

Behind this first man, the other serpents now change form, into naked and wide-winged men, godlike but rent, with bloody wounds and blisters on their skin.

“Who are you, to question me, who have come from Above with my Seven on a mission from the elder gods?” Erra asked, though he knew full well who faced him – and hoped to face him down – on this snowy day in hell, on the plain between Pandemonium and Arali, where Irkalla, Babylonian goddess of the dead, rules her underworld.

“I am Satan, and your audits have so terrified the damned that they destroyed New Hell’s Hall of Injustice, where I made my home.  Now what have you to say?  What compensation am I due?”

“Compensation?  None.  This inconvenience is your due.  Be thankful it’s not worse.  My audit finds you full of blame; as a lord of hell, you’re sorely lacking.  If you are Satan, and these your pets among the fallen angels, then get thee back, all of you abominations, before I loose my weapons.  As for your home:  in six days, six hours, and six minutes from the moment of its destruction, you made that building rise anew – or so we heard – entombing all the tortured souls lamenting their lost brethren there.  So I say again:  get thee back, Satan, before we add you and yours to those trapped within the foundations of that diabolic hall, to reign from there forever.  And I can do it:  I am Erra, and you know I will make good my word.”

It worked.  The abominations gave back one step, then two:  all but Satan, who held his ground.  He reached down and made a snowball with his hands, and cupped it, and straightened up again.  Now was Satan beautiful, as beautiful as a man can be, almost angelic with his white-feathered wings.  And the snowball between his palms was white and black and yellow and brown and did not melt.

Erra’s Seven stepped back as well, while the swords in their hands made arabesques in the chilly air.

The Kigali boy sneezed.

Satan turned his blazing gaze on the two Kigali:  “You mix in this, you natives from the tribe of hell, you sons of Ki-gal?  Why?”

“It is my honor to serve the higher heavens,” said Kur.  “We guide the auditors whither they goeth, from one hell to the next.  Not simply your realm, but all realms here are being visited by auditors from Above.  This, Satanic Majesty, you well know.  So take up your displeasure not with me and mine, but with these, and the gods who sent them here – and sent you here.”

Satan cast his icy-crusted snowball then, hard and fast, toward the circle of the Seven, toward the Almighty Kur and his Kigali boy.  But the second of Erra’s Seven sliced upward with his arcing sword and split the snowball in half.  Then blue-white lightning crawled over the halves before they could hit the ground, melting them.